by Gray Graham

Some of you will remember an article that I wrote last year about how much greater smartbooks were going to be than a tablet. They were suppose to be like thin netbooks with a much battery life, using either Android, Chrome OS, or some other version of Linux. The revolution was to begin in earnest.

We all know that Microsoft completely messed up the netbook market when their greed cause them to sell them only with Windows Starter 7, which had no personalization features in the hope that you would want to “upgrade to a full version” of Windows. Consumers and in turn manufacturers were not too happy which is why there was such a push toward Google's Chrome OS and Android.

Then came the iPad and the apparent death of the smartbook.

Now I made the mistake that many tech people always make. We always look to how a product functions as the reason it will sell. When you work with technology on a daily basis and you are using it for work, you need things to actually work and give you the most functions to get a job done.

Unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately this is not the way that the average consumer thinks. Function has little if anything to do with their purchase decisions. For many, it is simply style over substance. If it makes you stand out in a crowd then that is why they buy it. If it is popular then they buy it. Tech specs mean absolutely nothing to them.

Which brings me back to where is my smartbook? In the past year companies seem to have completely forgotten about the very concept of a smartbook in favor of tablets because they are the hot thing that everyone wants. Even Google seems to be at a crossroads of deciding if the Chrome OS will even see the light of day given that Android 3.0, Honeycomb, just came out for tablets. There should be no reason that it would not work on a smartbook, if they decide to make one.

Oh did I mention that the name smartbook probably can't even be used because some company claims they have a trademark to the name. As it stands now it doesn't look like I will ever get that smartbook, so I will just have to stick with the old reliable laptop and ride the tablet wave out.